Articles and tips from Pepperdine University's IT Technology and Learning group.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Evaluating Student Engagement Using the Statistics Tool in Courses/Sakai

by Alan Regan

Creating Custom Reports with the Statistics Tool in Courses/Sakai

As a professor, have you ever wondered whether your students viewed the class syllabus you posted online? Or maybe you're curious if your students are using the materials you've shared with them in the Resources tool? The Statistics tool in your class site can help answer these questions.

Click Show to reveal the Title and Description boxes. Enter a title so you can save your report.

Select the type of report you want to generate.Visits - how many times participants have accessed your site. Events - the tools and activities with which your participants have interacted. Resources - the documents, web links, or other materials with which your participants have interacted.

Select the time period, such as "Last 365 days."

Select the participants to include: All - will include everyone Role - will allow you to select a user type, such as "Student," "Instructor," etc. Custom - will allow you to select one or more specific users. You can Control-Click (Windows) or Command-Click (Mac) to select more than one person.

Select the report items to include in the report. Grayed out items are not available for the report type you selected.

Click Save Report.

Click the title of your custom report to view the results.

At the right, click the Show drop down menu to view more rows of data on the same page, such as "Show 200." You can use the arrow buttons next to the Show menu to navigate through multiple pages, if necessary.

Example Reports

"All visits, all users, last 365 days"

Want to see if someone visited your site on the day when an assignment was due? This custom report will verify whether they accessed your site or not.

What: Visits

When: Last 365 days

Who: All

How: User, Event, Date

"All events, all users, last 365 days"

Want to know if they ever viewed your syllabus, visited the Tests & Quizzes tool, or interacted with other tools? This is the report to create.